And shredded it.
Xyliria’s body convulsed.
Her scream didn’t come from her throat.
It came from the rot in her soul.
Her magic lashed out, a flare of blinding crimson light erupting from her fingertips. But it was too late. Too slow. The shadows were alreadyinsideher.
Already unmaking her.
They tore through her chest, ripped into her core, pulled every last breath from her lungs, and then stilled.
Silence fell.
Her body collapsed back onto the stone.
Lifeless. For one perfect, terrible moment I didn’t move. Just savoured the warmth of her blood on my hands.
It shouldn’t have felt good. But it did.
My shadows receded, curling back into me, retreating into the void that now lived inside me.
The grand hall was silent. My chest rose and fell, slow and steady.
The power that had surged through me was still there, humming beneath my skin, no longer bound, no longer silenced. It was waiting.
It hadalwaysbeen waiting.
75
Ashterion stood, the tremor in his limbs drowned by the roar of magic under his skin.
The grass beneath him shivered with leftover energy, shadows trailing after him like smoke from a fire that refused to die.
He didn’t stop to look back at the blade he’d left lying under the tree. Didn’t waste breath questioning the storm of power crackling in his veins.
He moved.
Ashterion took the stairs down from the rooftop two at a time, shadows flickering around his heels. They weren’t used to this,him, in motion.Him, with purpose.
There was no plan. No strategy. No grand vision.
He couldn’t fight Xyliria. He’d tried to find peace in surrender. In death.
But now?
Now he burned.
If he could reach the castle—if he could find the others,warn them,free them—maybe they could stop her. Maybe there wasstill a way to end this, to stop the poison at the heart of his court. Even if it meant his death. Even if it was a fool’s hope.
Better that than this quiet, obedient nothingness he’d endured for centuries.
He was nearly to the front door when it hit him.
The snap.
A severance.
